Thursday, November 22, 2012

This year I'm celebrating two Thanksgivings! I enjoyed my first Canadian Thanksgiving in October and today I'll be celebrating American Thanksgiving with friends and family in my home state of Connecticut. I have two Thanksgiving traditions. First, 25 of the last 27 years I've watched the Manchester Road Race in the same spot with the same friends. Second, after the race I always listen to Alice's Restaurant on the radio. I'd like to share that tradition with you. What are your Thanksgiving traditions? Please leave a comment.

Last month I shared a new service called Teachem that is using the TED-Ed model for creating online courses. The difference between Teachem and TED-Ed is that Teachem allows you to put a series of videos and questions together to develop a course. Over the last month Teachem has added a few new features that are worth noting.

The first and probably most significant update is the option to embed your entire course into your existing blog or website. Any time that you can streamline your online offerings into one central location for your students, it's a good thing. A second update of note is the new set of visibility options. You can now mark your Teachem courses as public, private, unlisted, or password protected. And the third update of note is the option to add teachers to your course. If I want my colleagues to contribute to the development of a Teachem course I simply invite them as teachers to join me in Teachem.

Applications for Education
Theses new Teachem features are nice but I still stand by what I wrote in October about the service. Teachem isn't a
revolutionary tool by any stretch of the imagination, it's basically
another way to flip your classroom (read my concerns about flipped
classrooms here). That said, Teachem it could be useful for organizing short review or introductory activities for your students.